Harry loves you: or maybe not
by animalbowling
Summary: Harry's thoughts while he tries to figure out what he wants, and what he definitely does not. Many, brief, parings. HPCC HPPP HPOW HPBZ HPBW HPDM


A/N: Poor Harry, thick as a brick. This is Harry's POV, thoughts, etc.

* * *

It started with Cho really. I remember it, one day in my sixth year, right when she decided I was no longer useful to her. We broke up in the hallway on the second floor, just past that bust of Merlin. Nearly everyone else had gone home for Christmas and I thought Cho had stayed to keep me company, but it seems that Davies fucker was more entertaining than I was.

I'm sure we screamed loud enough for the entire school to hear, so when _he_ came around the corner I wasn't really surprised. His parents were in prison after all, why wouldn't he stay at school over break? I just hadn't noticed he had until then. And I thought great, this is fucking fabulous, how could this scene get any worse? And I must have voiced something out loud because when Cho looked at me… she was furious, she babbled something about my life centering on Voldemort and that blonde prick, quidditch, and nothing else. That he was the only thing that made that morning eventful for me. I laughed in her face, and it had a vicious edge I didn't know I was capable of, and I said, you know what they say about quidditch boys.

I saw the tears running down her face and I was just so tired of it, so I let her go away. I was glad she was gone, and it was just me and Malfoy, but the look on his face wasn't decipherable to me, I wasn't skilled at such things. Anyway he turned on his heel and left before I had the chance to figure it out. The next day in the great hall I saw Cho sitting with that bitch of a Hufflepuff, sucking on his ear. And when I turned my eyes in disgust they caught on Malfoy, who was watching the same scene, fine creases around his eyes. I saw him pull out his wand and aim it at her, not seeing me watching through my fringe, and I did nothing. I don't know what he did but she pulled back from that idiot's ear like she'd tasted death on it. I looked down at the table and hid my smile. When I looked up again Malfoy had gone.

Then, in February I started dating Pansy. I'm not sure what possessed me, I saw her in the hall one day and I noticed how she'd changed, how she wasn't beautiful but was somehow still appealing. We went on a few dates and God knows why but I ended up agreeing to go to the Slytherin common room with her. I was an idiot.

She liked it when I talked in parseltongue, the way that I could get the snake above their common room door to let me in without the password. She thought I was power, when all I had was a neat parlor trick. Malfoy was in there, sitting in a leather armchair by the fire and when we came in he got up to do his song and dance about hating me and what was Pansy thinking and he'd always knew she was a slut but Potter? What on earth made her think she could bring me there without a fight? He pulled his wand to hex me and she stepped in front of me before he said the words. He had plenty of time to not say the curse, but the creases lined his eyes and his mouth stretched thin, and he glanced up quickly and she spent days in the hospital wing. We didn't date much after that. A shag or two I think, but it ended badly, and really she hated having to fear for her life. I could sympathize.

Summer of my sixth year at Hogwarts I realized that warm fuzzy feeling that I felt for Oliver Wood after all these years was lust. When I saw him at the match that day, I took my chances. I was lucky that I had some appeal to him or I suppose he could have had me arrested. I liked boys, and, I liked girls. Wood told me it was all good and natural but I suspect that was just a ploy to get in my pants. It didn't matter anyway. I saw Malfoy there. I didn't know that he was such a big fan of quidditch. I mean I knew he was on his house team and he wanted to beat me, but he didn't strike me as the gushing fangirl type. I'm not sure. Oliver broke up with me in less than a month, he mumbled something about travel and quidditch and the rest of his life. I'm sure I caught something along the lines of … 'for a fuck' as well. I could understand, it's not safe to be seen with Harry Potter, and having human cancer as a boyfriend must be even worse for your career than your life expectancy, if I were to judge by the pallor of Wood's face.

So I started my seventh year of school, alone again, completely disgusted by the way Hermoine and Ron carried on. I really thought I was become prejudiced at first, til I realized I was jealous.

I remembered Zabini vaguely; I don't really pay that much attention to the Slytherins. Still, when he approached me after the Halloween feast I was interested. He was gorgeous in a girly way with his thin face and fine bones. He smelled like a boy though and I thought maybe, he'd be the perfect mix of boy and girl, something I could really get enthused about. Less of everything—the overpowering masculinity of Oliver, and the irritating feminine girliness of Pansy, and (God help me) the complete anguish that was Cho.

So I said yes, and we went to the Yule ball together. Blaise had a black eye that night that he said he gotten in a fight with Crabbe for. I wasn't sure, but I had my suspicions when I scanned the room. Blaise was tough though, and I think he was proud of his battle scar. He wouldn't let me heal it, and we were so happy, at first. It's just, he turned out to be sort of girly. He was a _total_ bottom. He primped a lot, and I like that don't get me wrong, but there was nothing rough and masculine about him beyond the ability to take a punch. Come to think of it, he was way too fond of pain. For the first time, I broke up with someone. I told him to go bugger Snape if he wanted a Dom. Go me. I wonder if he took that advice, that's rather a pretty picture in my head. Mmm. . .

And then there was Bill. I feel like that should be in the Bible somewhere, and should be followed by that line from Genesis, and God looked, and saw that it was good. I saw it too, when Bill came to Hogwarts the second semester of my seventh year to teach a senior elective in cursebreaking.

I'm sure that our relationship was wrong and immoral in twenty ways, but I'm equally sure neither of us cared. Bill was, man, and…on top of that something soft that all the Weasleys seemed to have in their blood. He did have his rough edges though; I found that out the hard way. The day that I walked into the great hall with bruises I didn't know a glamour strong enough to hide, I thought all hell would break loose. They all thought Malfoy had done it, and I let them think it. Ron screamed at him across the hall that he was going to kill him, and I just stared at Malfoy's eyes. I could say something about them being hard or hurt or lonely, but they were just eyes. Only they were trained on me and not Ron, and the focus seemed way too sharp for him to be all the way across the room. He got up and stormed out of the hall. Dumbledore made Snape bring me to the high office behind the gargoyle, and Snape stood there and glared at me while I lied to Dumbledore. While I told him that I'd been trying a hard new feint I'd seen over the summer and fallen from my broom. Snape knew, Dumbledore knew, they let me lie and I was both grateful and full of hatred for the both of them. Bill was fired, for many reasons it turned out, but those aren't important. He must have left immediately after being told that morning, because we found Draco curled up in a ball in Bill's private rooms, unconscious.

"Draco" I whispered, clutching my too-small invisibility cloak around my shoulders. He looked so pale and small in the hospital wing's bed. I knew it was deceptive—high ceilings, big beds and all that, but still. He stirred but he didn't wake so I ran the back of my hand across his cheek, lingering on the line of his jaw. When I left the hospital wing I turned my head back for one last look and I thought I saw him move, but I think I was just hoping that he'd been awake.

Snape was mad. Strike that, Snape was ready to flay me and use me in his next healing salve. He said something along the lines that, if I could survive the killing curse my flesh was bound to have healing properties and how could he deny the wizarding world such a valuable commodity when really he had nothing against my body just the idiot that inhabited it, and no doubt he could make lots of money because it would be a finite resource… I stopped him before he went into packaging ideas. I apologized about Draco. Snape asked me what in the hell I was talking about, he had no idea. But it was in his eyes. I cried and he snorted and sneered and gave me a pat on the back as he flung me out of his room into the cold dungeon hall. I felt a bit better after that.

I went back to Draco the next night, and I crawled into his bed with him. He pretended to sleep but I could tell that he was awake. I laid there silent, then I told him I was stupid. I'm not sure but I think I heard him snort. Do Malfoy's do that?

Then there was hell. The war. Remus, Minerva, Filius, Ron, Hermoine, Charlie, Arthur, Molly, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, Mrs. Figg, Dumbledore, Lucuis and Narcissa Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Cho, that Davies fuck, Pansy and her long blond hair, Macnair with his own axe, Hagrid, Dean, Ginny, thousands, muggles, squibs, purebloods, halfbloods, Voldemort himself that stupid nazi fuck who ruined my entire life. The wizard's holy war, an ethnic cleansing. Malfoy, Snape, Fred and George, they were the only pureblood left, isn't that ironic. They nearly fell to vigilantes, exterminating for the other side. I went on the WWN, in the daily prophet. I cursed them all, I said everything horrible and nasty that I knew how to say to a wizard culture, and I retired from my life. I lived at Snape manor with my (reluctantly) adopted family. Severus and Blaise, a pretty picture after all … believe me. I write to Dudders, we've become friends. I'm lonely.

And then he showed up, and I cried. He rolled his eyes at me and called me an idiot. He brought house elves and they packed my things and disappeared. I didn't even ask where they were going, I hoped and I knew. Blaise was ecstatic; he doesn't like another dark haired nubile boy around his Snape. I told Draco that and he cringed.

We left, and I hugged Severus, shooting a wink at Blaise and a saucy glance at Draco; they both flushed.

Malfoy manor was huge and dark and cold. He said we could change all that and I believed him. I told him I was tired, and he told me it didn't matter anymore. I was uncomfortable. His eyes, sharp on me. They are rather like a ferret. Don't they hunt snakes like me, or is that a weasel I asked? Mongoose he said, and I laughed and called him Goose. He smiled, then briefly transfigured me into one. We laughed around a hug, and then a kiss. Sometimes, I still quack.


End file.
